Introducing BiggerPockets’ Brand New Show: Real Estate Rookie Podcast

Brandon:
This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, a special unnumbered episode.

Host:
You’re listening to Bigger Pockets radio, simplifying real estate for investors, large and small. If you’re here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you’re in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com your home for real estate investing online.

Brandon:
What’s going on everyone? This is Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here in the sea shed live with my friend, Mr. David Green. Welcome to Hawaii, David.

David:
I’m more than your friend. At this point, I’m your other half.

Brandon:
We’re pretty much like two… what’s that story about thousands of years ago or whatever. Humans were all like one person and then something happened and we got separated and then people spend their whole lives looking for their other half. Apparently that’s you and I.

David:
We’ve found it in Hawaii. Couldn’t be better.

Brandon:
Just don’t tell Heather.

David:
And we’ve got some new people to introduce.

Brandon:
We do. Today is a special show. You might notice that this is not the usual show. I didn’t even have a number for this show because tomorrow is actually where we’re going to launch this week’s episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast. I know weird, we always do it on a Thursday, but we’re going to actually launch it tomorrow because we have a special announcement to make today and that is Bigger Pockets actually creating a brand new podcast, a brand new podcast.

Brandon:
We’ve got BP Money to help you learn how to control your personal finances. We’ve got BP Business to help you learn how to grow your business and we’ve got BP Real Estate, there’s a real estate show. But there’s something that we’ve been asked over and over and over to do and part of it’s my fault and part of it’s David’s fault here and that David and I had been invested in real estate for like 400 years and a lot of the guests we have on had been investing in real estate for like 400 years. Some people are saying we want more content to help people get started at the beginning, the first deal, the second deal, that layer. And so we are excited to launch today and we have the hosts of that new show here today with us, The Real Estate Rookie podcast with Felipe and Ashley. What’s up guys?

Ashley:
Hey, thank you for having us on today we are so excited to announce this new rookie podcast. I’m a buy and hold investor from Buffalo, New York, and we have such great content coming to you guys about how to get started. We want to be your guys’ accountability partners.

Felipe:
Yeah, thanks for having us on here, Brandon. Man, in that background, it looks beautiful and I’m jealous because it’s like 28 degrees here in Nashville.

Brandon:
So here’s the deal. I know I asked Kevin to fly you guys out here for this episode and he was like, you know what, Felipe doesn’t want to come to Hawaii, he’d rather stay in Nashville in the winter, so blame Kevin.

Felipe:
Ah man. Well since we haven’t been investing for 300 years yet, so maybe one day we’ll get there.

Brandon:
Someday.

Felipe:
That’s right. That’s right.

Brandon:
So I want to ask real quick. Yeah, we’ll start since I just cut you off Felipe. We’ll we’ll start with your story. Real quickly, you were on the Bigger Pockets…. both of you guys were on the Bigger Pockets podcast recently, had very, very popular shows. Some of our most popular shows we’ve had were with you two, and so that’s partially why you’re here today is because people love your story. So can you give a quick one minute version of your story and what episode you were on so people can go back and listen to the whole thing if they want to.

Felipe:
Oh dude, absolutely. So my name is Felipe Mejia, I’m from Nashville, Tennessee. I was episode 329 with Brandon Turner and David Green. I had the honor, the pleasure, the just amazing excitement to be on there and explain kind of what I do. Basically what I do, man, is I buy single family homes with a three bedroom, one bath up top and then I add another three bedroom, one bath in the downstairs and I just continue that process over and over and over again. We are up to nine in the portfolio, flipped about six or seven and yeah man, that’s kind of what we do. Nothing huge when we’re not buying apartment complexes or doing huge, huge syndication deals or anything.

Felipe:
Just really bringing value to the rookie guys out there that want to continue. And that’s what the show is going to be about, man, is really just reaching out to the rookie investors who want to buy one or two properties or just their next property. And they’re kind of stuck, right? They can’t really get with the people that have hundreds of properties and they’re still learning what some of the acronyms are. And that’s what this rookie episode is going to be about.

Brandon:
All right, cool. And what about you Ashley?

Ashley:
Yeah, so I’m from Buffalo, New York, as I mentioned, and I focus on single family duplex, triplex. I’m working on my first full rehab property right now. I started about five years ago, so I’m still a rookie myself getting started and I have tons of great content that I want to bring to you guys. We’re going to have people on here who are just starting out and we’re going to hook them up with a mentor to kind of guide them through how to get started and we’ll follow along the whole process. But Felipe and I are both really excited to get this show going for you guys.

Brandon:
That’s awesome. All right, so before we get out of here, and we’re going to keep today’s episode short here on the podcast because we want people to stop right now. Well, in a couple minutes when we end this and jump over to listen to the first episode of your guys’ show, Real Estate Rookie, which you can find in iTunes and Stitcher and on YouTube and everywhere these shows are found, but I get there, I want to actually get some content here so that people at least got something valuable. So here’s what I’m going to ask all three of you guys and I’ll jump in at the end. Best advice for a rookie real estate investor, somebody who’s just starting out looking for their first deal, not sure what to do, what’s your best advice for them? And I’ll start with you, David Green, because you’re in the C-shed with me today.

David:
Yeah. So working with all the rookies I’ve worked with as a real estate agent, you’re working with a lot of people, they’re buying their first house and they’re using you and you kind of have to help them through it. What I’ve found is that it is an emotional decision that you have to make. Now we talk about, know your numbers, and we talk about the numbers all the time, but that isn’t what makes people actually move. Emotions make people move. So you’re going to have a lot of fear, you’re going to have a lot of doubt, you’re going to have a lot of uncertainty. You have to understand those are all natural byproducts of not knowing what to expect. When there’s uncertainty, you’re going to have anxiety, stress, and worry. So what I tell people is, take the worst case scenario that you’re most afraid of and put a plan in place to cover you.

David:
What am I going to do if it doesn’t cashflow? Have a job where you make more money, live beneath your means. What am I going to do if something breaks? Wait until you’ve saved up enough cash that you actually have a fund. Answer all the doubts that you can think of first and then you’ve removed all your excuses not to act and then go take action. You’ve already covered yourself no matter if worst case scenario happens, you’re going to be okay. And what Brandon and I find in many other investors is worst case scenario has never happened. They exist in your head and that’s really the only place that they live. So don’t let those stop you from taking action, put a plan in place that will cover you if they happen and then you’ll take action and you’ll realize you probably never even needed all the contingencies you put in place for a doomsday scenario.

Brandon:
Boom. All right, that was good answer. All right. Which one of you want to go next?

Ashley:
I’ll go. But David, that’s great for even a seasoned investor to still remember to do that, jumping into different things. But for mine, when I started out I was a staff accountant and I quit my job to become a part time property manager. And that’s how I fell in love with real estate and learn to become an investor. So my recommendation would be to get paid to get the experience and to learn. There’s so many entry level jobs in real estate. Being a part time maintenance tech. I just met a cop recently who during college in between classes would do maintenance requests for a property management company and that’s how he got involved. And you can be a leasing agent on the weekends, Sundays as a side hustle. There’s just so many different opportunities. And with those jobs you get access to other investors, you can network and, as a leasing agent you get to see the leases, you get to see the process, the documentation. And I think that’s a really great way to get your feet wet in real estate.

Brandon:
All right, good answer. Felipe.

Felipe:
Actually, that’s great advice. Something I probably should have done while in college, not chase crazy dreams that I had. One of the things that I would, and you can go back to my episode 329 and realize some of the crazy dreams that I was falling instead of real estate. But honestly, I always tell the people that I help is, to go ahead and start earning while you’re learning. I get so many people that reach out to me and say, hey, Felipe, I need to read all these books. I need to create LLCs. I need to save this much money in the bank. I need to do all of these things before I can get started in real estate. And I’m like, man, if that takes you two years to do all that, you’ve lost two years of equity, you’ve lost two years of cashflow, you’ve lost two years of so many things.

Felipe:
Where I’m like, look, jump in, right? You’re not going to get a home run on the first one. And that’s okay. Catch a medium size fish, you still caught a fish and make sure that you’re earning while you’re learning, right? You’re always going to be learning. So why not go ahead and start earning some money while you’re in that growth mode. So, that would be my advice to someone that’s just starting out. Dude, just get a property that’s going to cash flow and then just, you’re going to figure it out from there. You don’t need an LLC right off the muscle. You don’t need to have a bajillion dollars in the bank. Just get that first rental property. It’s going to change your life.

Brandon:
Yeah, I always, like on Bigger Pockets webinars, talk about, and David, you know you’ve said it many, many times too, like the first deal doesn’t make you rich. The goal of out the first deal is to give you confidence, momentum, and some knowledge. And like that’s pretty much it. So don’t buy a bad deal. Don’t go there and buy a deal as that’s going to cost you your life. But just take action. I love that advice. I’m going to jump in with my final advice is developed, and I’ve said this a few weeks ago on the podcast I want of other shows, but develop rare and valuable skills. So that phrase comes from Cal Newport’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, which David and I are obsessed with and Cal Newport makes that point of like, rather than trying to come up with some super clever scheme to make some money, just develop really rare and valuable skills in the most rare and valuable skill for a real estate investor is knowing how to find good deals.

Brandon:
And that really hinges in fact, David and I were talking about this last night on my Lanai, like hanging out late at night with Ryan. The most valuable skill you can have is deal analysis because when you can analyze a deal, everything else becomes easier. So if you’re brand new, I just say like just start analyzing deals every day to start every day. Make it a goal to analyze one deal. If you do that for three months straight, you’re going to have so much more confidence, you’re going to understand your market, you’re going to know what to do going forward. You want to make an offer. It doesn’t take anything special to analyze a deal.

Brandon:
And if you’re listening to this and you’re not sure how to analyze a deal, guess what? We’ve got calculators in Bigger Pockets, I can help you with that. Check it out. biggerpockets.com/calc or come to one of our webinars. David teaches webinars. I teach webinars. Maybe we’ll throw you guys into teaching webinars someday because we just love the idea of like just deep diving with people on deal analysis. We do it every single week, several times at biggerpockets.com/webinar so yeah.

Brandon:
All right guys. Well, we’re going to close this episode down. Again, we’re going to resume our normal schedule tomorrow of the Bigger Pockets podcast. So tomorrow we have an amazing episode coming out. You’re not going to want to miss, but today we just want to end this thing so you can go and turn on the first episode of Real Estate Rookie. And of course don’t just listen to it, but do me a favor, subscribe to that right now. Even if you don’t have time right now to listen to it, go subscribe to the Real Estate Rookie podcast right now.

Brandon:
Just search on your thing for Real Estate Rookie and subscribe to it. And when you listen to it, if you like it, leave a rating or review. And again, do it today. Listen today and let us know what you think about the first episode, I think you guys are going to like it. And with that David Green, you want to say anything? Final thoughts and take us out.

David:
We get a lot of questions, Brandon, I do from people that say, I just want to know how do I get started? How do I get started? How do I get started? And we still cater to those people. We still give advice for newbies and we want you to keep listening to our podcast as well, but if what you know you’re hungry for is, I need more content specifically to get started. This needs to be a main staple in your diet. You need to be consuming the Real Estate Rookie podcast and masterminding getting around other rookie investors. You want to be around as many people as you can that are going through the same things as you so that you can hear all the doubts in your mind or in everybody else’s minds too.

David:
That’s actually one of the things I started doing in my real estate companies is all my first time home buyers, they all come to the same place and they ask all the same questions and they realized, oh, it’s not just me. And then everybody feels so much better, right? Because what we know is taking action will build you wealth. It will make you smarter. It will make you better. It will get you better connections, taking actions is what it’s all about. But you’re not just going to jump out there and take action so you feel good about it. So this is all about feeling good about where you are in your journey. Accepting it, embracing it, and putting yourself in the position where you can do better. And this is a great community for you to be involved in, if that’s where you find yourself presently.

Brandon:
Very good. All right, well let’s get out of here, David Green. You going to end the show like usually do. [crosstalk 00:12:09]

David:
Yeah. This is Brandon, live from the sea shed, Turner with David Green signing off.

Host:
You’re listening to Bigger Pockets radio, simplifying real estate for investors, large and small. If you’re here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you’re in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com, your home for real estate investing online.